 launch YouTube all right we're live on YouTube and I'm going to open up the webinar and we're live we're on welcome friends we're going to get started in just a moment welcome welcome hello everybody we'll let the attendees fill the room here good morning all right I'm going to jump in with some announcements um hopefully this is working yes okay here we go good morning friends welcome to the san francisco public library virtual library we are excited here today to be partnering with the mexican museum our continued partnership and we hope to continue in the future as well so this is part of our summer stride events and summer stride is not just for youth so you can join up and do your 20 hours of reading and get your iconic san francisco public library topa with that beautiful art you see there from kanalani wanita who is a bay area children's illustrator and amazing human being we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the aloni tribal people and acknowledge the many raw mutish aloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards in the lands in which we live our library is committed to uplifting the names of these community members and nations with whom we live together we encourage you to learn more about first person culture and land rights and later on i'm going to put a link into the chat box where you can find a giant reading list on first person culture and land rights resources and reading list i want to just tell you about some quick library info we have a five monthly read of our library that's been going on for years and years it's called on the same page and we are celebrating the work of jacklyn woodson and reading red at the bone jacklyn woodson is a renowned children's author and y a author that's young adult and she will be in our virtual library on august 12th discussing her youth focused work but this is an adult book so check it out at your local location and we'll have a book club as well tomorrow academics talking about the black panther tales of wakanda super excited about this one it should be very fun on july 30th we're going to be doing some styrofoam printing with our local favorite artist ali bloom uh the 28th we have the tinderloin museum and san francisco neon and the director of letter form archive joining us to talk about neon and fonts on matchbooks so that should be interesting and i don't know if you know that san francisco public library has a jail and reentry services department this our department is a very small team but mighty work they do and we serve all the jails in san francisco with actual going into the jail services providing books and resources but we also do referenced by mail for all of the jails west of mississippi so they are a super important apartment department and they also help folks who are released get back in with reentry services job services and things like that housing etc but this film is about social justice and restorative justice movement and takes place in san quentin so very local san quentin's in our backyard and just how how we serve these citizens that are our citizens and our community so come check this film out all right well i would like to introduce bertha redriguez from the mexican museum and she's going to give us a little info an update about what's happening at the museum bertha hi everyone thank you anicia anisa for inviting us um thank you for this opportunity uh we are very happy to partner once again with the san francisco public libraries the summer stride programming for 2021 uh promoting our digital exhibitions which is an effort that seeks to showcase the work of internationally renowned mexican american latin american and chicano artists for those who don't know us uh i'll share a bit of history the mexican museum was founded in 1975 and since then and throughout its history the museum has adapted to diverse dynamics that affect the communities that surround us our permanent collection comprises outstanding pieces by mexican mexican american latin american and chicano artists and as well collections from latin america mexico and the united states as we are right now currently undergoing a process of reconfiguration that will result in an expansion of our galleries and our main purpose is to serve as an axis of unity and diversion for the hispanic community in the california bay area and the united states we're very happy to have our exterior completed which marks a major milestone in the development of the new mexican museum and like many construction projects we have experienced delays due to covid related construction and logistic challenges and but we plan to welcome the community in the new space in the near future in the meantime our teams continue to drive process forward and in addition to completion of the exterior the mexican museum has secured new collections and we are actively planning the first exhibits for the new space we welcome your support and we invited you to visit our website mexicanmuseum.org to see our exhibits and if you want to tonight go to support thank you thank you bertha so good to hear an update on what's happening i know san francisco has been waiting a long time and we are still waiting we're very excited and and definitely want to support the mexican museum all right we are in for a treat today i am um so in love with the work of this artist naeum the zanel gorgeous work so we are in for a treat because we have a scholar who has richly studied his work um sofia solis has obtained her their doctor of philosophy from autonomous university of barcelona and their phd is on naeum zanel uh solis is a researcher of that communication department at the autonomous university of agua agua us calina ah calientes yes i'm the lawyer so i'm so sorry everybody um they have developed different postdoctoral projects in mexico slovakia academy of performative arts slovak slovak academy of sciences and latvia academy of latvian culture how exciting um solis has uh linked cross cutting study of cinema and gender and has published articles relating to feminist film theory and decolonial thinking in audio visual media that is such an awesome um lineup of what you do so sofia so i am so excited to have your knowledge and to share what you know about naeum zanel and i'm going to turn it over now okay sofia thank you for being here thank you thank you i mean i'm so excited to be here thank you anisa and thank you the san francisco public library and also thank you to the mexican museum again for the invitation and like um over the top to share with you my research and also to share with you the work of the maestro naeum um this research took me around four years to complete and um this also gave me the chance to to meet the maestro he was very kind inviting me into his home back in snango del aire and he showed me some of his pieces and i was like very happy to see some of these paintings in person so um let's start i'm going to share my screen please anisa if you can tell me if everything is okay okay i think i'm sharing okay perfect so if you haven't visited uh you haven't visited the online exhibition of the museum please visit it it's a very good chance to get to know the the work of the maestro it has a beautiful text from black caversial uh it's very well written and i think it's a very good opportunity to meet to to approach the work of the maestro it's also beautifully selected here and i also gave a talk back in december last year um also about the work of the maestro this talk was in spanish language but i think if you want you can understand most of it anyway i will talk briefly about what i said back then okay so let's go to the presentation so the first thing we have to have in mind when we approach or or when we enter the one exhibition from the maestro's home is that he has a very uh solid discourse about self representation so it's like 99 percent of his pieces are self-portrait so he's very committed to this self narrative um so we need to have this in mind because we are entering to this exhibition and we only see these self-portraits okay so this this is this is very important i i i wanted to highlight this this before we start then when i started uh my research i found out that there were two main interpretations of his work uh on one side they were telling the art historians were saying that his work was a confession that something very deep like he was telling a secret that he cannot tell by speaking words but he was um painting this secret you know through this his artistic career he was uh telling this secret confessing this secret and for me this kind of interpretation was not reaching you know the political potential that i think his work has and in the other side the other as art historians because they were divided uh they were saying that his work was um was related to exhibitionism he was making some eschatological versions of himself you know and he was showing off he he's uh you know because there there were a lot of news and then this interpretation also was related um to one exhibition he made at the end of the 90s in the modern and the modern museum of art in mexico city that was called el gran cico del mundo and to enter this exhibition there was like a big installation like a big printing or illustration let's say of a mouth it was his mouth so it was a big like a big entrance so you were entering to his mouth and let's say in through his body so you see all these paintings and there were paintings like uh he was sitting in the toilet for example or he was taking a bath or something so when you are going to like exit the exhibition you were exiting through like another big installation it was like an illustration of his anus so you were entering to his mouth and through his body and exiting through his anus right so this exhibition exhibitionism you know interpretation exhibitionist uh it was related to this um exhibition right and uh and the modern mexican modern art museum so for me both there were like not enough uh or not lacking this uh political content that i think his work has like he's very strong so i entered to study his work and also i entered studying his life so i found for me two moments in his life that determine uh his work his artistic work okay the first one is his childhood he is from a very small town in mexico in the state of veracruz it's a very conservative town very small and very religious one okay so from that moment he grew up with his mom and his grandmother and this very you know environment of this conservative like a strong um environment so from that from that moment he retrieved some of the elements that we can still see in his work for example the mexican folklore we can see in this painting the mexican lotteria that is one that that i'm showing now i think i can put a little screen okay this one the lotteria and he retrieved these elements from from from that period all right and also the religious one this the virgin of guadalupe when he was a child he had a vision uh of the virgin of guadalupe and from that moment he was like very he's devoted to to the virgin okay so the second moment in his life is when he moved out of veracruz in in two mexico city uh he was uh he he he wanted to be a teacher so he moved to have this formal education as a professor he worked as a professor during 20 years actually and uh maybe at the end of the 60s he enrolled also in the school that that is called lesmeralda which is one of the most prestigious fine arts schools in mexico that is currently in the national center of arts in mexico city and in that moment in mexico what's happening a lot of a lot of things were happening in mexico but at that time let's say the 70s or something what's happening the rupture the rupture let's see the rupture is an artistic movement that uh was coming from the 50s and got uh got stronger uh through time and in the 70s was like really strong in mexico it was like strong influence and strong tendency in mexico so um the rupture it's called like that because it's a breaking moment away it's a breaking away moment sorry from the escuela mexicana so you know la escuela mexicana is what we know as the muralist and that was formed by ribera cicados and orosco and other other painters painters and this escuela mexicana was full of political propaganda was born after the revolution in the 1930s and 1940s and it was uh let's say it was part of a like a big plan from the state from the government to create after the revolution uh this new mexican modern modern mexican identity you know it was like reveal this identity and they the plan was to create this new new new one modern modern identity and the escuela mexicana was part it was like uh they were in charge to give this um to illustrate this new mexican to give this uh representation of this mexican new mexicanity we'll say so the rupture was breaking away with this political propaganda and they were looking into what was happening in europe and the us so what was happening in europe and the us was the avant-garde the avant-garde were related to performance and music and stuff but abstractionism was very strong also so um in mexico there was a big influence from abstractionism and also the maestro uh at first experimented with that he explored this um let's say this tendency but at the end uh he decided that it was not like it was not uh this abstractionism was not giving him the enough elements to express what he wanted to express uh so he went back to figurative painting and from that moment let's say during the 70s late 70s he started to paint what we see now so he has uh like many years painting like this um few decades now doing this self narrative constructing this self narrative through this time actually one of the biggest critiques that he received is that he's he was not changing you know the topic or even exploring another technique you know because if you see um for example he has this sepia colored paper that for me it reminds me like these old textbooks from when i was in primary school or high school this this text was from the state so it has this feeling of nostalgia for example so uh he was not changing techniques he was not exploring another topics so it was the biggest critique um like he was lacking some creativity for example um but no for me it was like he is really committed he's sticking to his self narrative and it's like very solid and very political okay so from the late 70s he's painting like this he's painting you know he's sticking to this self representation narrative okay so after this after the rupture after the 70s in Mexico during the 90s because he he the maestro got more more recognition in the art circles during the 90s he won several prizes in Mexico so during the 90s um he got more recognition but the 90s in Mexico were like there was a big social struggle and we we still had in mind this this picture for example it was the student movement in the 1968 it was a massacre if you know it and we still have this in in our memory right also the lesbian and lesbian and gay and gay right movements were getting stronger and they started in the 70s also during the 90s were more visible and also during the 90s in the middle of the 90s um the government decided to go full in this neoliberalism right so change to to bet entirely to this new let's say proposal it is not new proposal but okay we entered to this new era let's say of neoliberalism so they the the president signed this pre-trade treatment and that the treaty and at the same time uh the you know the EZLN the greea in Chiapas uh started you know so this um this entering to the to the treaty to the neoliberalism was demonstrated this um both both side of Mexican of Mexico of sorry of Mexico you know in the one side we wanted to be modern we wanted to go into you know globalization to go you know into these new markets of the global north let's say and in the other side we we had a lot of inequality social poverty and a lot of social issues so it was like a very strong moment in Mexico during the 90s and all the artists especially the maestro I think the maestro got into this discourse like arguing also discussing or questioning this um let's say modern values okay so these modern values came after the revolution you know like I told you after the revolution the government started started with like a big discourse like a veterinarian dream you know from culture education politics and everything you know was around this discourse and so the new identity the modern Mexican came from this period so the maestro is not responding to this period itself but is he is questioning the identity that came with these values okay so after the revolution the same party governed Mexico during 70 years until the until the end of the century actually so um the the the feeling the social feeling that that the society the community was showing non-confirmity with these values also you know with these demonstrations and everything that we had in our memory and also the maestro getting to that he was questioning his uh this identity from his side of course and he started to paint this this and he started to like responding to this and to this Mexican identity okay so um in his work we can see a lot of Mexican symbols like the flag we constantly constantly put the flag the flag the Mexican flag in these paintings for example this one I think it's very strong this is this painting is not in the in the catalogue of the online online exhibition but I think it's a very strong story because it's uh usually he I mean he always paint like sepia colored you know paintings but this one I think I struck this one I extracted this one from my my phd dissertation so it's like uh black and white but I think it's very strong uh the name is uh like um I am Mexican too and with this one I think he's uh questioning this kind of uh this this identity on how to be a man you know what what were the values that you know determine this gender identity okay so we can see like a lot of examples of these uh response for example in the in the left we have the prisionero so he's sitting down in this chair like it seems to be a colonial wooden chair and he sat up with this Mexican ribbon so he's like naked he cannot move he's vulnerable so I think it's clear the message is clear and also in this one like uh soy puro mexicano he's showing these wounds that that that that came with this uh you know identity modern identity that is deeply discriminatory okay so he was questioning this sorry so he was questioning this for example this painting I love this painting it's called oh santa bandera it's a triptych sorry if I put only two uh in the middle one it's just a flagpole so this one uh this painting was actually removed from the from one exhibition in the museo del chopo which is a university museum from the unam it was removed removed it was censored from the from the exhibition which was a gay gay gay gay and lesbian festival so it was a demonstration from the community and they put back in this painting so this is a strong painting um it's one of the paintings that for me inspired my my phd dissertation that I think is very strong and very political okay so he was questioning this uh modern identity on how to be a man what what what were the features of the or or the characteristics um that were described in describing the mexican man all right so uh this is the fun theoretical part uh to explain this and my argument in my phd dissertation I used the the theory of performativity that I think you you are very familiar with in san francisco this it was exposed by judy potler and says that a gender is performance right it's a performance since we embody the cultural definitions of gender okay so they are cultural because they belong to a specific culture they are definitions because they are rooted into language and language to find everything all right to find everything in the short in the social and subjective reality so we embody these cultural definitions of gender and we also speak you know define or determine through language these also these cultural definitions okay so sexual identity is um it's a construction it's a process so it's um let's say a historical process because it's constructed through time through time so uh if we think uh it's a process let's think that these cultural definitions are like citations or are like pins so every time we embody certain cultural definitions we cite or we quote or we pin to a gender norm so there are hundreds hundreds of definitions of gender so um and sexual identity is constructed through their reiteration or through their repetition of these um cultural cultural definitions of gender right so it is through these repetitions and that sexual identity is constructed okay so the logic the inner logic of this process is the relationship of these three terms sex gender and desire desire meaning the sexual orientation right so sex let's say the master was questioning this um modern identity right so this modern identity was defined like this sex as a male gender as masculine desire as a heterosexual or straight as you want so this one was the gender norm in Mexico so if you live outside of you don't assume or you don't appropriate properly or fully or entirely this gender norm you live in the margins you live your outcasts from the social acknowledgement so uh this is like for me it's um deeply deeply discriminatory right so uh in my work I also think that the master was going beyond and uh there was a deep relationship between sexual identity and the national identity so to this formula to this equation I I add up this cultural belonging so let's say the master was questioning how to be a man or how to be recognized as a man but I think he was questioning this um how to be a Mexican man or how to be uh how to be recognizable as a Mexican man okay so the formula was the following sex as a male gender as a masculine desire as a heterosexual and the cultural belonging as a macho so you have to be male masculine heterosexual and macho to be recognized as a sexual as a Mexican man so as you can see this is like a very conservative hard monolithic statement gender norm also gender norm so I think the maestro was using the same mechanism of uh performativity he was performing also his um new identity so he in every painting he was like doing this uh quotation or citation of himself so let's think in like you know these many years of painting or or with the self-portraits so he is like uh quoting himself again and again and again in every painting so he is like constructing his identity he is like uh you know getting this um saying that his existence is uh also valid it's legit so he was constructing this true performativity also you know he was responding you know to this formula breaking it you know questioning this and saying that he was also Mexican doing this uh over the years with this reiteration of himself so for me this was this this is a very strong political discourse doing this um and sticking to this committing to this with these years okay so we can see in all of his paintings he's uh he's uh doing this taking talking about his life uh retain some elements from his childhood and everything that is uh you know his living living experience so uh please if I I explain or if I went too simplistic with my explanation of performativity of course please read more about any any book of Jodi Potler is good it's perfectly is excellent but of course I suggest you to start with gender trouble and any book of course of Paul Preciado it's also like amazing if okay I I suggested to start with the Manifesto Contra Sexual it's very strong I'm very political and it's amazing okay so after my PhD I I changed just a little bit my line of research and I went uh into what is called the the colonial turn or the coloniality so uh the the colonial turn it's um part of what is called the critical Latin American thought it is not new it's coming from the 90s also and it is based on the term of coloniality coloniality it was exposed by Anibal Quijano and he defined this term as a pattern of power okay so to understand this in a better way we have to first differentiate colonial coloniality from colonization colonization is the is the act of occupation okay it's the occupation of the territory by military force controlling all the resources the people of course the economy and the politics okay so that what was happening when the Spaniards came to America to the you know American continent and coloniality it is the pattern that emerged from colonization from that point until now so we are still living in a condition of coloniality we have we have our independence you know back in the 1810 but we are still living in a condition of coloniality okay so coloniality is deeply related to the concept of modernity so we often relate modernity you know to the enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century but the colonial scholars said that modernity came during the the colonization this is for me it's like it's very curious because they say that when the Spaniards came they opened like new routes of navigation new ways of trading so somehow they like unite this the old continent and they started what is now called you know this world system of capitalism so modernity started with that during the colonization in the 1492 okay so it's deeply related to this coloniality why because with modernity came a kind of or sort of rationality this rationality said that the modern rationality express or yes express like you know the the they were rescuing the native people from the primitive state like taking away from the from the primitive state into civilization the western civilization western european civilization so we were living behind this you know knowledge traditional knowledge that we had before the knowledge from the land our dialect our you know everything that we had back then to you know to go into this modern world to go to to be more civilized or to be civilized at all okay so the modernity started there there and it is related to coloniality now this modernity as there's an example that is often used by the the colonial scholars that says that when we are in school we first learn about the universal history that is no other than the european history okay so the this european history is told like it's the you know the universal almost the history of humanity okay so it is it is a meta narrative it is like a huge construction or huge fiction that we had to assume when we were doing the the the colonial period and still so after we learned about the mexican history as a secondary topic so we are not nor we are not part of this um universal history and we if we are named in this universal history we are named as the other or as the subaltern as the third world you know download the hierarchy the social hierarchy in in the world and if we want to be part of this modern world we have to assume these visions of ourselves you know we have to assume this identity and to leave behind all this past to leave behind all these and just you know understand that that the the best knowledge is the european scientific knowledge or now that you know the the u.s european scientific knowledge so we leave behind everything that we have that we had in the past okay so uh in the the colonial term we have a methodological tool that is called the situated knowledge so imagine this meta narrative that's supposed to tell the history of humanity and also guides you know these um progress of development of humanity also like uh if if it was like a linear progress so it also tells you your aspirations uh where do you have to go um if you want to be you know part of the global north or the first world or anything as you want to i mean as you want to define it so the situated knowledge so this meta narrative is like beyond somewhere that is not rooted in anyone or in anywhere the situated knowledge means to find yourself to locate yourself in your day-to-day uh living experience in your traditions in your heritage in your and in your dialect for example in your personal history to find yourself and just construct yourself from this and also if you want to be like to have a political stand you have to create new knowledge knowledge that you have you know from that that comes from you and not and not from this meta narrative that is a way that is uh in a metaphysical space you have to find you you have to locate yourself and create your own knowledge rescue and recover your your knowledge from the past also so i think the maestro is doing this also we can see here in this painting also it's a story this black and white please uh if you want to i i i wanted to show the original painting you know with the color and everything but okay this this uh i think it's important this uh this painting uh this is uh the indio y española mestizo uh we can see this representation of this meta narrative i'm telling you in the in the right side we we see you know the spanish the spanish woman and in the right side we see and let's say um ethnic or indigenous men okay so uh we can see you know the sophistication modernity and wealthy from the european side and then the other side we see you know the the primitive you know masculinity rough character uh that is here in the this uh you know mexican man so we are here we are you know the the child we are not entirely in our adulthood let's say we are not yes we are not part of these big meta narratives we are you know the subalters still so uh i think the maestro is doing this he's locating himself from this situated knowledge he's finding from his uh own past he's retrieving his uh mother his grandmother his uh the father figure his dialect also because he's handwriting uh he's recovering all all of these things from his childhood so he's constructing this also through time through his paintings through through his artistic career he's the colonizing himself and the colonizing also the visual arts okay just by doing this situating himself away from this meta narrative okay so i think it's very important and also very political at this time of globalization okay so uh in the talk i gave in december i promised someone asked me about this painting this painting is not from the maestro is uh it's a painting from Fabian Chaitis and the question was i promised to answer this because at that at that moment in december uh the name is lit on mine i'm sorry but now i think it's a very relevant question also to this what i'm telling you about okay so this is the painting from Fabian Chaitis uh that is called the revolution he he was um he was in an exhibition during the 2020 in the palacio de bellas artis in Mexico City and he was very controversial controversial um we can see um this iconic figure of zapata you know it's a figure of masculinity of rough character revolution you know this uh you know a stereotype of of a man in Mexico so we can see now it's a i know it's a satirical version of zapata and and i think it's raising many questions about masculinity uh the main question for me is that what will happen if we put some you know macho icon in the in the position of representation that often women are you know objectified sexualized uh in a position that you know this uh we can see in advertising or even in museums in art that often uh women are naked objectified and everything so for me it was like what if we put this you know macho icon in this the same the same discourse um so for me this is the main question and i think it's a very important one now it's very controversial but also for me it's uh let's say that he's using the same cultural definitions of or the same elements uh to put this satirical figure so he's using these elements of uh womanhood let's say into a man only so he's not like he's not um going beyond this binary system gender system he's just using these same same elements or stereotypes or elements to stereotyping um women into a man so in a sense he's also reinforcing um this binary system for me in the in in the other hand for me the the narrative of the maestro because the question that someone asked me last time was if it if it was appropriate to uh to find some similarities or some you know some differences between the maestro and this worker that i show you and okay the similar the similarities are that um they both are questioning this um identity but they there are some major differences i think the maestro has a very solid narrative very powerful and very political one that is um attached to this set of representation and he's um as i told you he's constructing this identity his own identity his own personal history to painting and he's also decolonizing this uh new wave of mexican contemporary art just by by finding himself in painting by using his own personal history okay so i think is uh one of the greatest artists of the 20th century in mexico for example so i admire him very much and if you want to know more about the colonial turn please um read um Walter Miollo and catering wash these books here both are like an anthologies uh but you can find many many and different articles and scientific papers and the right we have this anthology like both books are like really good of course i i suggest you to also read The Colonial Feminism for example Aura Cumes or Ochi Kuriel that um they explain very very well the situary knowledge and they were you they are using it as you know to to to create new knowledge for example Aura Cumes she's a researcher and she's also she's also Mayan from the from the Guatemala and this border with Mexico and Guatemala so she's using this you know ancient knowledge to construct herself and also you you know doing research so this is very interesting and to finish my presentation i will read um fragment from because the maestro is also writing poetry and also it's it's just a fragment okay so i would read it in Spanish in the regional language but you can follow my reading in the blue one that is the translation i it is my own translation okay so please um have that in mind so i will read it it's um the title is Renacer and says el inocente no cede a la insistencia de las burlas piedras que lanzan los culpables se consuelen el jardín natural poema que pervive como madre que alienta su voluntad de vuelo prepara el causa de sus ímpetos guarda en su memoria la casa la huerta el jardín la seiba las veredas el arroyo su justo deseo de salvación nutre sus cimientos condición necesaria del que crea siente como si el índice supremo le impusiera la marca del elegido y enchido de gracia se transfigura sin traicionarse en un suntuoso personaje decimista so i think this poem represents also you know the feeling of the of his entire work his uh i think he's um recalling some of his past and he is telling how how he became an artist so i think that's it from my part um if you have any questions please any comments i'm ready there are some questions sofia i'm gonna yeah there a mix of um youtube chat and questions so i'm gonna try and kind of just um and thank you that was so informative and that poem was beautiful it also brought up a lot of things that you can get a lot of these resources at the library i'm so glad you mentioned all those books i added them to the doc and we actually had judith butler do a talk i also put um that link into the um chat box yes it was mind blowing and like one of the heroes of my life that i got to check off my my list of being able to promote so she they are amazing judith butler just you know huge in in the field of gender study so let's see um do you think that um nahum felt denied his identity by the nature of the mexican culture government and way of life denied his identity yeah definitely if we just in the question we see this by nature of mexican culture yes yes definitely if we think this that is something like a sensualist version of the identity the mexican identity yes he was denied and he also told once that he when he moved to mexico city he found some kind of relief because you know in between 22 million people you are like almost invisible so he felt relief so i think he was he felt denied so he is very like you know with a lot of courage to tell his own history through these paintings uh which i don't find exhibitionist at all he's just telling this um constructing this which is part of life you know yeah this kind of news and different representations of ourselves so i think yes definitely he felt denied and that same person just made a comment that there's you know so many identities to have to try to be you know and the freedoms that we get here in like a different culture where well even a bubble like the bay area you know you just step out of the bay area you're not free to be your own identity but to be able to to have these identities that you have to try to be and to perform to but to be able to find your own and as as he did through art is pretty amazing um so this person says they've seen more queer and latino art coming out and being embraced but most of it still by male artists um very little by women being embraced do you find this to be true and do you see any kind of change happening on that front okay so i think now there's a strong moment uh for feminist art also we have a tradition of feminist art in mexico that what's coming from the 80 from the 70s also um and it's getting stronger so i think yes it's uh the the the art done by women is it's getting stronger it's getting gaining more visibility um we have for example we have a lot of uh women directors film directors a lot of um that that they are getting more recognition a lot of visual artists so uh yes we need more more support yes we need more spaces we need more independent and alternative spaces to show our work but yes we are gaining more visibility and i think the feminist movement it's getting stronger and stronger every day so yes and is um is art supported sort of in the same way as it is here in america like uh is there grants and foundations and um you know how are these artists being funded uh yes there are many grants from the government not not that not that many to tell you the truth um but yes and also you know there are we need to create our own resources be you know self manage and to find our own you know uh the spaces and we need to find our own sponsors to do our work and it's kind of difficult being you know a woman and being an artist that are you know both together are more difficult but yes we can we need to find these spaces to create a part from you know the government grants and scheme or plan we need to find our independent spaces to express you know apart from this uh institutional discourse our own speech so i think we are doing so we are creating more spaces and we need to find the grants also and sponsors but we are doing it yeah that's that's very interesting i um think during uh shelter in place in the covid situation especially in the bay area has really brought about that like community for community spirit and art for you know art for the people kind of way of life again and i really it's just been a wonderful silver lining of pandemic life but um yeah i think it just realized how important arts are to our our life and our sustainability um so fia thank you so much that was such a rich talk and like i said it opened up a lot of other uh resources that you can find at our library and i'm going to put this in the chat box one more time you can also watch this again on youtube and check out all of those books that so fia talked about yeah and resources you know we got a ton of Judith Butler of course but also a lot of latinx art all sorts of amazing stuff so so fia thank you the mexican thank you thank you so much and um we appreciate you being here and library community we'll see you again thank you thank you thank you everyone bye bye